Shorts
by thir13enth
Summary: From talking cats to sexy collarbones, from January to December, from police to Pandora to Kurosawa, and all other random tidbits of the universe. A collection of short one shots: part fun, part serious, part crack, but all Darker than Black.
1. Medium

**Yay, first Darker than Black fic! I really wish this section was more expansive in Fanfiction though! Guess not too many people know this gem of series!**

**Anyways, this story is just going to be filled with a bunch of shorts, none have to be related to the other, basically all the random ideas that I come up with but can't expand on to create a story or a plot out of. Mini excerpts, I'd say.**

**So it's probably bad wording to put it like this, but this story is going to be my 'dump' where I drop off all this plot bunnies so they can gather and proliferate.**

**But as they all say, one man's trash is another man's treasure...I'm not even sure if that can apply to this, lmao.**

**And before the author's notes get longer than the trash debut:**

* * *

><p><strong>Medium<strong>

* * *

><p>After the more serious discussion about their missions fell apart, the four of them relaxed, backs against a tree trunk, except Mao, who was curled up at Yin's side.<p>

It was a peaceful morning. Huang had already gotten through two cigarettes and turned a page in the newspaper to scoff at a trivial scandal article that was written by a frivolous amateur, probably an intern or someone within the likes of that. Hei was thinking about the groceries left in his house, knowing that he wouldn't be able to get by breakfast with what was left and mentally sorted out what he would have to buy at the store on his way home. Yin was staring off into space at the clumps of light that shone through the leaves and branches of the tree overhead, sparkling on the dew stuck on the grass from the light rainshower that occured in the small hours of that day earlier.

But Mao was thinking of something else, some realization that bothered him ever since he was told that Yin's medium was water.

"Yin," Mao said suddenly, and his voice startled the rest of the crew, dragging them all out of their quiet reveries.

Yin looked down in Mao's direction to acknowledge him.

"Your medium is water," Mao stated, as if it wasn't obvious enough to everyone.

Yin nodded.

"And you can witness everything that happens around water, right?"

Yin nodded again.

"Any kind of water right?"

Yin nodded once more. Huang lost his patience.

"As if you know nothing, kitty!" Huang spewed out, coughing a smoke cloud in the cat's direction.

Mao shot a look back at Huang, and continued.

"So you can see through the rain right?"

Another affirmation.

Mao hesitated.

"And...even in the shower?"

Yin nodded.

Mao blinked.

Hei coughed.

Huang suddenly grew more conscience of what he did in the shower after watching mature content.

* * *

><p><strong>thir13enth<strong>


	2. Souvenir

**I can't get enough of Hei. I'm so sad the show has ended but I feel like it should end that way, all ambiguous and leaving the viewer stunned but wanting more. Well, c'est la vie.**

* * *

><p><strong>Souvenir<strong>

* * *

><p>"Damn it," Hei cursed, in a black tank top standing over the kitchen counter facing a wooden cutting board.<p>

He shuffled through all his drawers, holding a half head of cabbage in his left hand, in search of the kitchen knife.

He travelled through his entire kitchen and even glanced around a bit in his living room, but to no avail.

He was missing his kitchen knife.

_And _he was hungry.

Hei sighed.

It seemed he had no choice.

He lifted a floorboard and pulled out one of his special use-only-for-fighting knives. He took a deep breath, exasperated in the prospect of using one of these beloved beauties for something as trivial as cabbage. What a shame.

But return to the cutting board he did, and proceeded to cook his dinner.

He was interrupted by a sharp knock on his door, which he recognized as his landlady's call to the door.

He attended to that quickly, knowing her quick temper and impatience. Hei whirled the door open to see the elderly lady standing outside his door with a large soup pot.

"Oyama-san," he greeted her with a smile.

"Li, my good-natured boy! We had leftover soup and the bums downstairs were already passed out from drinking so I am giving it to you!"

"Ah, thank you."

She stepped into his apartment, heading towards the kitchen.

She clucked her tongue as she crossed the living room. "I never understood how bare your home is. You should think of staying a while! You are much more welcome than the others here."

Hei made a noncommittal sound.

Oyama placed her pot on top of his counter, but she noticed a glimmer of steel.

"Ooooh," she murmured, stepping towards Hei's cutting board.

Damn it.

Oyama whipped up Hei's knife and held it up to the light.

"Wow…" she said in awe, turning the knife back and forth, and later testing it in the air. She looked back at him, eyes wide. "Where did you get this kitchen knife from? It's very interesting!" She mimicked chopping food with it in the air. "I bet it cuts very well."

"That it does," Hei said, ever so dryly.

"I've never seen a knife like this before. Where'd you get it?"

Hei hesitated.

The last time this sort of thing happened, he was in China. But, everyone in China knew the Japanese had the best knives on the planet, so Hei had said something along the lines of: oh, I got it in Japan while studying abroad.

Except that now he was in Japan…

"It's from China," he said, finally.

She gave him a sound of approval before laying it back by the cabbage.

"Bye then, Oyama-san!" Hei said, opening the door for her as she walked out of his house.

"Good Li-san," she smiled, reaching up to pat his head. "Always as polite as usual. Buy Obaa-chan a set of that kind of knife when you go back to China, okay?"

"Of course."

* * *

><p><strong>thir13enth<strong>


	3. Cornered

**I don't quite remember the name of the contractor that had the ability to cut using the air and stuff. I think it was Luc or something, but I'm too lazy to Google it right now.**

* * *

><p><strong>Cornered<strong>

* * *

><p>"Akira!" the librarian shouted at the small Japanese boy that made his tiny body comfortable in the middle of the beanbag towards the corner of the room.<p>

Akira looked up, eyebrows furrowed, wondering why the librarian was angry at him.

"Don't doggy-ear the pages, you hear?"

Akira nodded, and covertly flipped the corner of the page back up.

He couldn't help it. It was a habit he started to pick up. He loved the crisp new page under his finger and the feeling of creasing a nice sheet. It was convenient too; Akira was the avid book reader and didn't have so many bookmarks.

Besides, bookmarks got lost and sometimes slipped out of the book. And bookmarks were larger than the book themselves sometimes so it was more difficult to pack orderly in his bookbag. When the pages were creased, he could immediately get to the page he wanted to get to without needing to worry about anything.

Well except if the book was from the library.

Akira was notorious for leaving pages dog-eared.

"Go buy your own books to fold into origami!" she'd always tell him.

Akira rolled off the beanie bag chair, carrying his twelve year old body over to one of the larger adult tables in the back where the librarian at the desk wouldn't be able to watch how he read his books.

He climbed into a chair across the nearest table that wasn't completely occupied, opposing a rather large man that was probably at least four times the size of Akira.

Akira plopped his book down on the table and continued to read, flipping a page.

But then he heard a familiar sound.

The cupping of a page corner and the nail creasing down on the page.

That was a sound Akira was very well accustomed to! That was exactly how it sounded when Akira dog-eared his pages!

Akira looked up to see the brown-skinned man in front of him doggy-earing the page of the book.

Except that he found it weird that the man was dog-earing _every _page he read.

The man caught Akira watching him, and then the man noticed the unfolded fold at the corner of the page Akira was on.

The man smiled, "You like reading, too?"

Akira nodded.

The two of them returned to their texts.

They doggy-eared their pages in approval.

* * *

><p><strong>:3<strong>

**thir13enth**


	4. Risk

**Real quick memory jog: Yutaka Kono and Yuusuke Saitou are Kirihara's Police Department team members from Season 1.**

* * *

><p><strong>Risk<strong>

* * *

><p>"Ah god, Tokyo traffic," Kono complained, slumping in his car seat.<p>

"Patience, young grasshopper," Saitou said.

"Shoulda walked. Or biked."

"It would have been a while though."

"Kirihara-san is going to get mad for us being late."

"You're right," Saitou shuddered.

"Don't wanna disappoint your crush."

Saitou defended himself with stutters but Kono ignored them in favor of the green light, muttering, "Finally."

They accelerated down across the street before they were stopped at the next red light.

"Fuck man, these red lights take forever!" Kono growled. He pouted a bit, and then casually remarked. "I should have been a contractor."

"Why?" Saitou asked, a bit alerted at the use of the term in 'broad public.'

"So that I could operate machinery like this and flip the colors once in a while."

Saitou raised an eyebrow. "I heard that for an obeisance you could lose body parts."

Kono brushed off the warning. "So? I think it'd be worth it."

Saitou rephrased: "I wouldn't risk my dick."

"Oof, you're right," Kouno agreed.

Both men shuddered.

* * *

><p><strong>thir13enth<strong>


	5. Unlimited

**Hey. Been a while since I've updated! Excited to post at least one more shot!**

* * *

><p><strong>Unlimited<strong>

* * *

><p>Kirihara was ecstatic to get the chance to have another day to spend with Li.<p>

She hated to need to admit it to herself, but she thought he was someone worth her time. He was rather cute, with his awkward timidness, a completely innocent and friendly guy. Not to mention he was—and here, she coughed as she inwardly thought this—quite the physical catch in an adorable way.

He had a huge appetite however.

But Kirihara was geared.

**diveintothenine**

He came to pick her up, standing at the doorway of her workplace, leaning into the wall.

He had a sheepish smile on, and raised his hand in a wave when she looked in his direction.

Kirihara cleared her throat silently and, without making anyone suspicious, stood up from her chair and tidied up the papers on her desk, walking out of the office before someone noticed that she was headed towards not only the door, but towards someone waiting for her at the door. She forced a smile down until they were down the hallway and stairs.

"Li-kun! How are you?"

"Very good," he smiled brightly. "You?"

"Same as any other day," she replied, sticking her hand into her purse to pull out a list of restaurants and their locations that she had ripped out of a page in a magazine. "Here, let's check out one of these new restaurants that opened out this month!"

His mouth curved into an 'ooooh' and his eyes widened as he looked over the page, reading the descriptions and reviews of the six or seven places on the paper.

She gushed. He was so easy to please.

Kirihara stood over at his side, putting her left hand on his right shoulder and lightly leaning on his side in an effort to look at the page with him.

Ah, who was she kidding? She just needed a reasonable excuse to be standing so close to him so that she could smell what shampoo he had used the night before.

Mm, some kind of musky tropical orange.

"What about this one?" she asked, pointing to the second one with her right hand, which brushed over his right arm intentionally.

"Mm…no," he mused.

"This one?" she pointed to the one right after.

"Nah."

She frowned mentally that she didn't get his interest in the first two tries.

"Well, what kind of food do you like?"

"I'm good with anything."

"Perhaps a Chinese restaurant to remind you of your home country?" she asked, moving her hand over to another restaurant's description.

"Hm…I've already been to that one."

Kirihara wanted to make this date _special. _Whether the Chinese exchange student thought it was a date or not! She was going to have him realize that time spent with her was definitely worth his time and not something he could do on any regular day!

"Okay then, Indian cuisine?" she suggested the one right before.

"Sorry…" he apologized, turning his face back towards her with an apologetic smile.

Her breath caught for the two seconds when she got a nice close up of his jaw and lips but she shook herself out of it and said, "Well, choose a place randomly. I mean, I just got a page with buffets because I know how much you eat, but if you want to go to a formal place or something, I wouldn't mind."

Actually she'd be quite pleased. Formal meant more official. And official meant more serious.

She shook her thoughts out. Wait, this was Li-kun, what was she thinking? It wasn't like she wanted to get with him or something; he was just adorable.

"Yeah, they all sound good," he agreed.

"Then pick one!"

"I can't."

"Okay, this Chinese one, then," Kirihara hastily decided. Was he really this indecisive?

"I'd rather not."

"Then _you _pick!" she said, hiding her exasperation.

Suddenly she wasn't so sure if he was cute anymore.

"I can't."

"Then not the Chinese one, the first one in the second column."

"No, I _can't_."

"Why not?" Kirihara was now a bit fed up.

"They'll kick me out!"

"What?"

"I can only go to buffets once! If I go to any of these ones again, I'll get kicked out or have to pay for five!"

* * *

><p><strong>:) Reviews are nice.<strong>

**thir13enth**


	6. Spark

**I was just stirred by some imagery from the anime as I was re-watching it. I think I'm proud to say that for all my history and life of never re-reading or re-watching anything (unless it's movies with friends), that I re-watch Darker than Black, just because…I don't know, I sorta adore it? **

**Maybe that's an understatement.**

**Anyways, this one is about Mai Kashiwagi from the episode with the moratorium and her father getting seeds from a flower from Hell's Gate.**

* * *

><p><strong> Spark<strong>

* * *

><p>Humming a nervous nursery rhyme to comfort herself, she stepped into her empty home where she last left her mother.<p>

Where her father said his insipid goodbyes.

Where she dried her eyes, realizing that she was actually alone.

Except for that aquamarine sparkle embedded in her left wrist, which kept her company, the watermark of a tortured soul.

She kept it covered, with a bandage that she donned so long, the skin underneath was a paper white.

But in reality, she didn't want to admit to herself that she was still hanging onto the hope that her father would come back, that she still believed she could run to her father whenever she needed a shoulder to cry on or some rice to shut up her stomach.

Oh no, she had to be stronger than that child self of her that she kept hidden, crawling under her pale skin.

**pagebreak**

She decided to go confront her father, prove to herself that she was better than he was making her to be, that she was strong and capable of doing anything, even though he hadn't done anything to help her grow.

Grow like that plant that he always kept in his constant attention, attending to its every need for a drop of water or moving into the sun, patiently waiting for its blossom.

Well damn, she blossomed without his care. She was better.

She still couldn't believe that _plant _was more important than she was in his eyes. That the _plant _was treated as though _it _were more worthy of his last name.

"I hate you," she spat at him, his back turned at her, face alone in book.

Her father slowly rotated, and looked at her earnestly with genuine concern in his eyes, but there was a tinge of something else underneath his dispassionate façade.

There was real fear.

Mai was satisfied that her father looked at her as though she were a miracle child that should be awed upon. At that moment, she didn't credit any of who she was to him. Not at all.

Not even that speck of blue that he named for her, her 'good luck charm.'

But she didn't look at herself in the mirror every day, intending to be outside of the dark lonely apartment as much as possible. She didn't realize her father's fear came from something above her.

It was that fire in her eyes.

If she wasn't careful, she'd burn an entire city to ashes.

* * *

><p><strong>thir13enth<strong>


	7. Tart

**Thanks for the reviews! They really make me happy these days, especially since it implies there are still others thinking about Darker than Black than just me, which is comforting.**

* * *

><p><strong> Tart<strong>

* * *

><p>Hei suddenly started to laugh his ass off.<p>

Huang whipped around, eyes locking in a hard glare at Hei. He stepped closer to the Asian, "Hei! I know we're on a cruise ship, but damn, keep it together! We're on a mission! I don't anyone to notice us unnecessarily!"

Hei shook his head, still laughing down to the ground, holding his stomach.

Huang elbowed the contractor. "Hei!" he hissed once more.

Hei slowly caught his breath, reducing himself to chuckles, and made a gesture toward the abundance of food spread out in a buffet line in the ship's eating area.

"Yes, the food," Huang said dryly, as if he didn't know what it was.

"No, that," Hei made a pointer finger to clarify.

Huang read the sign: "Chicken and mushroom tarts?"

"The translation of that. The Chinese one. It's mistranslated."

Huang took a closer look: 胆小和讯速增长的妓女。

"I'm not Chinese, remember?"

Hei's lips twitched into the slight curve of a smile.

"The Chinese version reads 'chicken and mushroom prostitute'," Hei explained, biting his lip to keep it from turning into a smirk.

Huang, in humor, choked on some spit.

Hei's smirk broke free. "That was the best one I've ever eaten."

* * *

><p><strong>Based on a true story. :P<strong>

**thir13enth**


	8. Sight to See

**Hey all…haven't submitted work for Darker than Black in a while...well here's a little drabble just so you guys know I'm still alive and thinking of Hei :D**

**Enjoy the words!**

* * *

><p><strong>Sight to See<strong>

* * *

><p>"Ay, Kono, you young ones have turned completely…I don't even know the word," Matsumoto grumbled, holding his drink tightly in his right hand and looking around nervously at the languid men and red-cheeked women around him.<p>

"What are you talking about, Matsumoto?" Kono replied, throwing back his amber hair to take another swig of his bottle. "This is _the _party life that you haven't experienced. Consider this a favor I'm doing for you."

"Ehh," the older man sighed, stepping out of the way of a rather passion filled couple.

"Look around, Matsumoto," his companion said, waving his arm over the entire club scene, slugging an arm around Matsumoto's shoulders. "There's an entire sea of pretty faces to get to know…and in more ways…than one." And here Kono concluded his slurred speech with a hard thump on Matsumoto's back.

Kono shifted his eyes lazily back and forth, swimming his sights through the ocean of bodies.

"Ah," the younger man finally sighed when he saw something that he liked.

The other man scrunched his nose when smelling the alcohol on Kono's tongue. "You've had too much to drink. Everyone looks good to you right now. Don't waste your energy."

"So suddenly the old man is the expert on love?" the angered Kono growled. He pushed away his grey-haired coworker.

Matsumoto moved his drink up so that nothing would spill onto his suit.

"Oof, check _that _chick out," Kono blurted out loud, a bit louder than he needed to say.

Matsumoto looked up, just to see Kono's judgment on women.

And the older man did have to admit, Kono's eye was not that bad after a few drinks after all.

"You know sometimes I'd love to be a contractor," the younger man wistfully said, before he was elbowed by his companion to shut the hell up.

"Don't speak of them in public, idiot."

"Just hear me out," Kono insisted.

"No, one more word and I'm getting you out of here."

"I'd give anything for x-ray vision right now."

"What are you talking about? You perv—" and then some wholesome curves brushed past Matsumoto's sleeve, catching his eye as well.

Kono smirked. "See, you old fart?"

* * *

><p><strong>thir13enth<strong>


End file.
